Feel the Thunder

Feel the Thunder is an installation piece composed of hockey memorabilia for an imagined team named Ukkonen, (thunder, which emanates from the power of Uko, the God of Thunder in Finnish mythology).

The objects are familiar - trading cards, jerseys, patches -  yet also speculative, suggesting alternate pasts and futures. They were designed to illustrate the rhizome of aspirations and challenges, hopes and efforts, investments and wagers of those who make their life in ice hockey.

This installation, in the process of design and as a public exhibit, facilitated thinking across design, discourse analysis, ethnography and sports, serving as a multi-modal form of social analysis and knowledge production. The project was rooted in a long-term ethnographic study of Finnish winter sports embedded in the Cold Rush research Arctic Economies project.